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Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach was born on February 18, 1838 in Brno, Moravia in the Austrian Empire which is present day Czech Republic.
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Mach was homeschooled until the age of fourteen and later became a student at the University of Vienna in 1855 where he studied physics and medical physiology.
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Ernst received his doctorate in physics in 1860. He was a professor of mathematics at the University of Graz in 1864 and then later the professor of physics. In 1867 he accepted the chair of experimental physics at the University of Charles-Ferdinand in 1867
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In 1887, Ernst and his son, Ludwig made one his major contributions to the science of physics when they utilized schlieran photography to capture an image of a bullet creating a compression of air around it due to the fact that it moved faster than the speed of sound. Mach, in this same year presented a paper that described shockwaves and the concussive sound. Because of this paper, the ratio of the speed of a fluid to the local speed of sound is now recognized as the Mach Number. -
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Mach died at the age of, a day after his seventy-eighth birthday on February 19, 1916.
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Mach, Ernst. “Remarks on Scientific Applications of Photography.” Science in Context, vol. 29, no. 4, 2016, pp. 441–42, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889716000168.